Dancing Aztecs

by Donald E. Westlake

Bad Death’s eyes narrow. “That’s what I know, is it?”

  Frank, after all, is a member of a backstage union, and his theatrical background is coming in handy. Grinning at Floyd, and shaking his head, he says, “Well, Steve, looks like our cover’s blown.”

  Floyd has no idea what in hell is going on. He says, “Steve?”

  “Our cover’s blown,” Frank repeats, and turns back to Bad Death to say, “You know Irishmen don’t work with guinea mobsters. You know where Irishmen work.”

  Bad Death’s eyes by now are so narrow he looks like a character in Dick Tracy. He says, on a rising note of doubt and disbelief, “Cops? Cops?”

  “Not exactly cops,” Frank says. He still has the same off-center grin on his face.

  Floyd is just as baffled as ever, except he can see that Frank is getting some damn message across to this spook, so now Floyd chimes in, saying, “That’s right Not exactly what you’d call cops.”

  Bad Death is leaning forward like a child watching a cake get its icing. In a hushed, delighted whisper he asks, “Fed-eral?”

  “You know what we are, Bad Death,” Frank tells him. Taking his pencil flashlight from his jacket pocket he points it at Bad Death and says, “And you know what this is, too.”

  “It’s a flashlight,” Bad Death says.

  “Don’t count on it,” Frank says. Suddenly stepping backward, he points the unlit pencil flashlight this way and that, saying, “Everybody freeze.”

  Two of Bad Death’s men, who have actually been more or less frozen up to this point, immediately make moves toward bulging pockets, but Bad Death snaps at them, “Cool it! That’s one of them disguised guns!”

  Bad Death’s men are bewildered, and frown at everything and everybody. One of them says, “Boss, that’s all bullshit Those mother-fuckers didn’t have no ID or nothin’.”

  “That’s ’cause they’re undercover, you damn fool,” Bad Death tells them. Hasn’t he, after all, seen all the James Bond movies and all the Gravedigger Jones-Coffin Ed Johnson movies and all the Fred Williamson movies and all the Pam Grier movies? “And that’s why they don’t carry a regular gun,” he says.

  “That’s right,” Frank says, and he suddenly grabs Maleficent, who has been standing to one side paralyzed, like a jelly doughnut turned to stone. Jabbing the end of the pencil flashlight into Maleficent’s side, Frank ducks around behind her—there’s plenty of room for Floyd back there, too, who immediately joins him—and Frank says, “Gangway! One move out of anybody, and she’s dead!”

  “Oh!” cries Maleficent “Oh, Savior!” which is the way she pronounces her husband’s name.

  “Go ahead and pray, lady,” Frank says. “But back up while you’re doing it. Slow and steady.”

  Bad Death and his men look tough and hang tough—and are tough, come to that—but they stand there and don’t move, while Maleficent backs slowly out of the room, with Frank and Floyd peeking up over her shoulders like a tank crew. F. Xavier, hands outstretched, calls, “Don’t worry, honey, they’re federal men, they won’t hurt you!”

  “Though it might be taxing,” Floyd says, and chuckles.

  Frank, hidden by Maleficent’s floor-length muumuu, kicks Floyd in the ankle, and they exit with no more bad jokes, backing all the way through the funeral parlor to the street, where Frank and Floyd immediately split, running like track stars on a bed of coals, while Maleficent shrieks once and falls over on her back.

  A little later, several of Bad Death’s men will have to go out and heave Maleficent up onto her feet again, but at the moment they and F. Xavier are busy being Bad Death’s audience, as Bad Death beams around at everybody and says, “How about that? You ready for that? Fed-eral, baby, they’s fed-eral men and they’s got an undercover eye on Bad Death himself! You know you with the power when you with Bad Death!” He looks around at the admiring, respecting faces. “Fed-eral,” he says. “Huh!”

  3

  From Frank’s list:

  Felicity Tower

  240 St. Paul’s Court

  The Bronx

  In her bedroom, before her full-length mirror, smooth brown flesh gleaming in the lamplight, naked as the day she was born (though considerably altered and improved in size and shape), Felicity Tower is doing the Hustle, all by herself, despite the fact that the Hustle is the first new dance in fifteen years in which people dance while touching one another. The New York Times, on August 3, 1975, pointed out that, “The rise of the Hustle provides a socially acceptable way for people to get their hands on members of the opposite sex,” which undoubtedly had much to do with the dance’s success, even though, as the Times also warned, “One must study, practice, and work to achieve success in doing the Hustle.”

  Felicity Tower had read that item, and believed it without question. She did believe that the Hustle was a socially acceptable way to get her hands on members of the opposite sex (which can be read any way you prefer), and she had no doubt that study, practice, and work eventually bring success not only in the Hustle but everywhere in life.

  This belief in work had been drilled into Felicity from infancy, back in Covington, Kentucky, where her upwardly striving parents—a sanitation man and a waitress—had pushed through college each and every one of their seven children (Felicity was fifth) as though they were seven labors of Hercules. The work-and-education ethic permeates Felicity’s life. It has led to her current vocation as a teacher at Liberation High, as well as to her activities for such worthy causes as the Open Sports Committee. Unfortunately, it has also indirectly led-to her being, at twenty-nine, a beautiful sex-hungry naked brown virgin learning to Hustle alone in front of her bedroom mirror.

  If the men who fantasize about Felicity—and there are many of them—could guess the fantasies she has about them, alone in her bed on many a sleepless night, they would go off like Roman candles. They would just simply explode in Technicolor. But none of them has ever had the slightest suspicion. Felicity is a volcano, molten and surging within, but never once has she erupted, so that to all men everywhere she remains a volcano impenetrably disguised as an iceberg.

  Over the years, Felicity has struggled many ways against her virginity, but nothing has ever worked. Alcohol relaxes her, but in quite the wrong way; she simply passes out, remaining neat and prim the whole time. Analysis proved there was nothing wrong with her attitudes, only with her performance, but failed to suggest any useful ways to improve. Some drugs made her vomit, some made her paranoid, and some made her pass out, but none released her inhibitions. Group therapy enabled her to talk with other sufferers, but shop-talk alone has never solved anything. Two Caribbean cruises only demonstrated that, though she couldn’t tan, she could certainly burn; but even with a peeling nose, which most men consider sexy, she remained an arctic in the tropics.

  And now, dancing. Inflamed by the Times’ lure of getting her hands on members of the opposite sex, Felicity has set herself to learn to Hustle, as at one time she set herself to learn Latin or sew buttonholes. With a record on the stereo (“Ease on Down the Road,” by Consumer Rapport), she is practicing the moves before her mirror. Her arms are out in front of her as though holding the hands of an invisible partner, and she is swaying with a sensual grace that would dry the throat of anyone who saw her. Her bare legs are stepping firmly on the 1-2, 1-2, and she is twirling, gliding, shuffling, improvising on the 1-2-3. The hands-out gesture is submissive, the movements of the bare brown hips and shoulders are virtually a definition of sex, and the placid cool beauty of the face would make connoisseurs of us all.

  “Ease on dah-own, Ease on down the row-oad.” Felicity steps, steps, twirls, sees a startled white face in the mirror, twirls, breaks step, stops, stares at the mirror, sees nothing. She turns, her breasts lifting as she looks over her shoulder at the doorway, and still she sees nothing.

  Was it real? Frowning, she stares again at the mirror, as though it might contain a face that didn’t exist in the real world, like de Maupassant’s Horla. And it does! The face i
s there, and as she meets the round startled eyes, the face disappears again. Which is to say, it ducks out of sight behind the doorframe.

  Felicity’s heart is pounding. She had been perspiring lightly from her exertions in front of the mirror, but now that sheen is growing cold and goosebumps are forming all over her body. Blinking, licking her lips, she turns and moves on suddenly unsteady legs toward the doorway.

  And in the living room there are two of them, two great hulking white men, massive-shouldered, with great hard hands and tough pitiless faces. “Dear God,” Felicity murmurs, knowing she is helpless, falling back against the doorpost, her trembling hand fluttering up to her throat.

  One of the men takes a step toward her, his powerful hand reaching out. “Take it easy, lady,” he says. (Ease on dah-own, Ease on down the row-oad.”)

  “Oh, please,” Felicity whispers. She is utterly at their mercy, utterly.

  “This won’t take long,” says the white man.

  “Oh!” cries Felicity, and staggers backward along the living room wall until her legs hit the arm of the sofa. She topples onto her back on the sofa, sprawled out, one leg flung across the coffee table atop Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Viva, and Penthouse. She should defend herself, protect herself, but she is weak with terror, boneless with fright. She lies there, unable to move.

  The two men are staring at her. Then they stare at one another, and one of them says, in a low awed voice, “Jee-sus!”

  “Now, look,” the other one says, to Felicity, and lifts up his hand with something in it, “well be right out of here.”

  Something in his hand. Felicity’s fear-glazed eyes focus on it, and it’s the golden statue, the little naked man, the Other Oscar. And now the white man is holding the Other Oscar carelessly in his hand, and Felicity’s mind does wild, improbable imaginings as to what he can possibly intend to do with that thing, until the white man reaches up his other hand and snaps off a pinky. A finger from the statue, the pinky of the right hand, raised over the devil-mask head. Pik, it sounds, in a sudden silence, because the record has ended in the bedroom.

  “Oh!” cries Felicity, as though some bone of her own had been broken.

  “Shit!” says the white man, out of some measureless deep of disgust, and he slaps both statue and pinky down onto a table. And then—Felicity stares in shock and disbelief—he and the other white man, without a word, both turn and climb out the living room window to the fire escape and disappear. Disappear.

  And in the bedroom the record player, which has been engaging in a series of self-involved clicks, now begins to play the next record, which is “The Hustle,” by Van McCoy. “Do it! Do it! Do the Hustle!”

  “Saved,” mutters Felicity aloud. “Saved again.” And she bursts into great wailing tears of relief.

  4

  From Frank’s list:

  Amanda Addaleford

  151 Midwood St.

  The Bronx

  Because Mandy works late, and because she has to ride the subway every night from midtown Manhattan all the way to the South Bronx, she travels with armament. In her bag, which she holds tight in her left hand, there are a spray can of Mace, a police whistle, a pencil flashlight, and a roll of pennies. If attacked, she can repel the mugger with Mace, whistle for a cop, keep an eye on the criminal with her pencil flashlight, and if all else fails she can put the roll of pennies in her fist and slug him one.

  It isn’t rape that Mandy fears, though, not at her age. She’s sixty-two, she’s stout and flat-footed and she walks like a duck, and Valerie in one of her rages once told Mandy she had a face like a potato, a judgment with which Mandy cannot disagree. So her purse, rather than her person, is all she expects evil strangers to be after, but so far—and she’s been working for Valerie Woode nearly eleven years now—she has never had to use her arsenal even once. “New York,” she commented to Valerie the other night, “just don’t live up to its reputation.”

  Valerie Woode is, of course, the famous Broadway star, currently appearing in a revival of Pinter’s Homecoming, and Mandy is her dresser and personal maid, even traveling to Los Angeles with her on those rare occasions—five, in all this time—when Valerie consents to appear in a motion picture. (She never consents to appear on television, not even a talk show.) With the seven-thirty curtain, most plays break by ten o’clock, but still there’s another hour—removing Valerie’s makeup and costume, dressing her for whatever after-theater activities, preparing the dressing room for the next day—before Mandy’s work is done and she can take the subway home. (Valerie supplies cab fare, which Mandy spends as she pleases, mostly on Loft’s candies.)

  Tonight, as usual, the subway ride to the Bronx and the two-block walk to the apartment are completely uneventful, but when Mandy finishes unlocking the three locks on her apartment door and steps inside, damn if she doesn’t walk smack into two burglars just climbing in from the fire escape through the living room window. (Their own breaking-and-entering noises must have kept them from hearing Mandy’s unlocking noises.) “Goddam!” Mandy yells, exulting in this promise of combat after all these years of preparedness, and paws her hand quick down into her purse.

  The burglars—white men, surprisingly enough; the recession must be even worse than the television says—seem both startled and resigned at her presence, but not fearful. Both of them speaking at once—Mandy doesn’t even try to listen to what they’re saying—they approach her across the room, hands out in meaningless gestures. Mandy grabs the can of Mace, pulls it out of her purse, aims it at the face of one of the burglars, and just as she’s about to press the button she realizes it’s Frank.

  Frank. A stagehand or prop man or something, one of the union men hanging around backstage. Mandy has known him for years, has seen him off and on during the runs of at least four shows. But she has never expected to find him climbing in her living room window.

  She lowers the Mace can. “Frank?” she says.

  Frank stops talking and stops walking and just gapes at her. The one with him also gapes at her, then turns and gapes at Frank. He looks a lot like Frank, so Mandy says, “This your brother?”

  “I don’t believe it,” Floyd says.

  “I believe it,” Frank says. “After tonight I’m gonna believe anything.”

  Floyd gives it the old college try. “Lady,” he says, “you got us all mixed up. You’re thinking of some other guys.”

  “You’re Frank,” Mandy says, pointing a definite finger at him. “Last time I saw you was during Lancaster Abbey.”

  Frank sighs. “Amanda Addleford,” he says. “How’m I supposed to know that’s Mandy?”

  “Holy Christ,” says Floyd. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  “It’s done,” Frank says.

  Floyd says, “But she’ll call the cops! She’ll turn us in! We can’t just leave her!”

  Frank gives him a weary look. “Whadaya wanna do? Kill her?”

  Mandy says, “Now, just a damn minute.”

  “I can’t kill anybody,” Floyd says.

  “You can’t kill me,” Mandy informs him. “That’s for damn sure.”

  Frank shakes his head and comes to a conclusion. “We’ll have to take her with us,” he says.

  Mandy and Floyd both say, in unison, “What?”

  “We’ll hold onto her until we get the right one,” Frank says. “Maybe Jerry or Mel or somebody can figure out what to do with her next.”

  “You ain’t taking me anywhere,” Mandy announces. Pointing the Mace can at Frank again, this time she does press the button, and a hissing sound happens. As Frank ducks back, a white foam trickles down the side of the can. The hissing fades. Six years in the purse has taken its toll; the Mace can is dead. “Well, hell,” Mandy says.

  “By God,” Frank says, “I never thought I’d see it Somebody even unluckier than me.”

  Floyd has moved to a corner of the room, and now he says, “Here’s the statue.” Pik. “Wrong one.”

  “Natur
ally,” Frank says. He takes Mandy’s arm. “Let’s go,” he says. “It’s been a long day, and I want to go home.”

  EXCEPT …

  Wylie Cheshire was mad. He came up out of the game room and yanked at the wall phone in the kitchen in such a manner that his wife Georgia looked over at him and said, “Watch it, there, Wylie, you gone pull the phone out the wall again.”

  “You shut up, woman,” Wylie said, and dialed the sporting goods store with a blunt jabbing fingertip. Then there wasn’t any answer because the place was closed this hour of the night, so he broke the connection and dialed the owner’s home phone instead, and when the man himself answered Wylie said, “Goddam it, Russ, this here’s Wylie.”

  “Well, hi, there, Wylie. How you doing, old son?”

  “I’ll tell you how I’m doin, Russ. That goddam punchin’ bag busted again.”

  “Busted?”

  “Layin’ on the floor.”

  “Well, you hit it too hard, Wylie, I’ve told you that before.”

  “It’s a punchin’ bag, ain’t it? Well, I’m punchin’ it.”

  “I’ll come over first thing in the morning,” Russ said “Nothing I can do about it tonight.”

  “Goddam it, Russ, I was just showin’ my brother-in-law some moves.”

  “You don’t know your own strength, Wylie.”

  “The hell I don’t,” Wylie said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” And he slapped the receiver onto its hook, glared at Georgia and her sister Faith, who were cleaning up the dinner dishes, and went back down to the game room, where Faith’s no-good husband, Deke Finburdy, was admiring the Other Oscar in the trophy cabinet. “Can’t get it fixed till tomorrow,” Wylie said, and drop-kicked the punching bag into the far corner of the room, near the dartboard.

  “This yere’s new, ain’t it?” Deke was gesturing at the Other Oscar.

  “Yeah, it’s new,” Wylie said. He was still angry, and in no mood to talk, so he just grabbed himself another beer out of the refrigerator, dropped onto the sofa, and sulked. Damn punchin’ bag.